How To Make Money From Youtube

How To Make Money Through Youtube

YouTube stars are the self-made celebrities of today: People who have earned an audience by creating content geared toward teaching, entertaining, reviewing, and being awesome on the internet.

And most do it just to do it—to scratch the itch of creating things and being in front of an audience.

Making money from a YouTube channel probably isn’t the reason you’ll start one, but the opportunities to earn are a pleasant surprise once you realize how many of them there are.

New Media Rockstars estimates that top YouTubers earn in the millions, some even in the tens of millions. Revenue can fluctuate greatly depending on the premise of the channel.

Here are just some of their estimates and the number of subscribers these YouTubers have:

EpicMealTime makes around $3.1 Million (7 million subscribers)
Ray William Johnson sits at $4.2 Million (10 million subscribers)
FunToyzCollector weighs in at a whopping $30.4 million (8 million subscribers)
However, YouTube channels on the smaller side can still be monetized. Your earning potential isn't determined solely by the number of subscribers and views you have, but also by the level of engagement you generate, the niche you cater to, and the revenue channels you explore. That's not to say subscriber count doesn't matter—check out our tips to get more subscribers on YouTube.

But before we get into how you can make money on YouTube, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of what your audience looks like first.

How to Make Money on Youtube

Just like being an Instagram influencer or a blogger, your audience might unlock your earning potential, but it's the creation of multiple revenue streams that helps you actually make money.

Luckily, there are several ways you can money on Youtube:

Become a YouTube Partner and make money from ads.

Make money on YouTube by selling products or merchandise.

Let your audience support your work through "fan funding".

License your content to the media.

Become a YouTube Partner and Make Money From Ads

The first revenue stream you’ll likely explore is ads.

You'll need to set yourself up as a YouTube Partner, which is easily done in the Creator Studio section of your YouTube account by going to the Channel menu to verify your account and enable Monetization (click here to go there directly).

After you become a Partner, you'll need to have an AdSense account to opt into Google's advertising network to actually get paid and see ad revenue reports

How To Make Money Via YouTube By Selling Products or Merchandise

It increases your exposure by putting your online brand and personality out there into the offline world, and deepens the relationship between you and your fans as they literally “buy into” what you're doing.
You can order affordable designs tailored for specific products, like t-shirts, using freelance sites such as Fiverr.

And when it comes to handling orders and customers, you can integrate your store with services such as Oberlo or one of the many print-on-demand providers that take care of all the shipping, fulfillment and customer support, letting you reap all of the benefits of a dropshipping business that demands less effort on your part.

Let Your YouTube Audience Support Your Work Via Fan Funding

Similar to crowdfunding a project, you can also set up “fan funding” streams to source donations from your audience.

As a creator, you're contributing your voice to the internet without forcing your audience to pay for admission. So, if it’s good content, your audience might be inclined to support you on an ongoing basis.

Many fan funding platforms offer creators another place for people to discover their content and a way to engage their most loyal audience and reward them for their support.

Some popular fan funding options include:

YouTube's Fan Funding: This feature on YouTube essentially lets you create a “tipping jar” for your viewers to donate whenever and however much they feel like contributing. You'll need to set up your YouTube account for advertising as outlined above.

Patreon: The membership platform that makes it easy for creators to get paid. Fans can subscribe to their favorite creators for as little as a dollar a month and receive exclusive rewards.

Tipeee: Lets you get a combination of both one-off and recurring donations

License Your Content to the Media

If you happen to create a viral video with mass appeal—say, a funny clip featuring your dog—you can license your content in exchange for money.

TV news outlets, morning shows, online news sites, and other creators might reach out about the rights to use your videos if they happen to go viral.

However you can also list your videos in a marketplace such as Juken Media where your content will be easier for the right people to find and purchase.

Work With Brands as an Influencer or Affiliate

Brands are investing more and more in influencer marketing, spending their typically large advertising budgets on influencers who’ve already won the loyalty of their audiences.

This creates a massive opportunity for you as a creator if you can negotiate the right deals.

Brendan Gahan, a YouTube marketing expert and influencer, recommends you establish your baseline flat fee by looking at the number of views your videos typically get and multiplying it by 5 to 15 cents per view (which is around what many brands are willing to pay for views via YouTube ads).

Depending on your leverage—your audience demographics, content quality and how unique and profitable your niche is—you might be able to negotiate a better deal if the brand is a good fit.

To give you another idea of what you can potentially charge, a mid-level influencer charges a brand on average $200 to $500 per post, according to one study.

The same study also shows that around 69% of YouTubers surveyed don’t think that partnering with brands detracts from their authenticity.

The key when partnering on brand sponsored content is to be transparent about it—not endorsing anything you don’t actually like or believe in, and being upfront with your audience about why you’re doing it.

Here are jus a handful of the many influencer marketplaces you can add your channel to and get discovered by brands both big and small:

Grapevine Logic: One of the more popular influencer marketplaces, you only need 1000 followers to join.
Famebit: With a wide range of brands to work with, you might find a sponsorship opportunity you'll be proud to be a part of. You need 5000 followers to join.
Channel Pages: Partner with other YouTubers as well as brands.
Crowdtap: Complete small content creation "tasks" in exchange for money and other rewards. There's no restriction on how many followers you need to join.
Some influencer marketplaces offer you free products, while others are known for having big brands who are willing to pay more. Capitalize on the opportunities that best suit your needs, but list yourself in as many places as you can to ensure maximum visibility for your channel.

For more on how to work sponsored content or product placement into your videos, check out YouTube's Guide to Paid Product Placement.

Alternatively, you can also become an affiliate for brands and make residual passive income through commissions from every sale you generate through your channel. This works especially well if you review products as part of your YouTube channel. Since there's no risk involved on the brand's end (they only pay when they make sales), there's usually a low bar to getting started.

Popular affiliate programs include Click Bank (1% to 75% commission depending on what the vendor sets) and Amazon's Affiliate network (earn up to 10% per sale). You can also reach out to brands in your niche that are running their own affiliate programs, which isn't uncommon in the ecommerce space.